Best of 2014 – The People’s Choice…..Part 2

Yesterday we brought you the first installment of our Best of 2014 – The People’s Choice where we ask members of the craft beer industry their top picks of the past year along with what they see as industry trends for the coming year. We featured a wide array of individuals, some were professional brewers, others were craft beer oriented business owners, while others were professional beer writers that were all thrown in together to come up with their top picks.

Yes, this being individual picks from over 3,000 possible craft breweries, there were no right or wrong answers, just opinions. However, from looking over the results from yesterday there were a few beers and breweries that kept popping up across the choices from the industry folk.

Today we bring you the 2nd and final installment in the Best of 2014 – The People’s Choice. Will we still see the same trends as yesterday?

Well here are well over 20 additional picks from the craft beer industry. Let see how these compare with yesterday’s choices.

I think that having the Craft Brewer’s Conference in Portland is going to be huge. My only regret is that I’ll be working events of my own that week, so probably won’t be able to attend any at my favorite places and I’m sure they’re all going to be great. I need a clone that can share sensory experiences with me!

This was my toughest question to answer, as I don’t necessarily have a ‘go to’. I am constantly switching things up at work and I don’t drink at home unless I’m having people over, so there’s rarely a six-pack of anything in my fridge. My guess is that I probably drank more Evil Twin “Ryan & The Beaster Bunny” – Saison, than anything else this year.

What were your favorite craft beer events of 2014 (name up to 5)?

Oakshire Hellshire Day & Barrel-Aged Beer Fest

Portland Farmhouse & Wild Ale Festival

Anderson Valley Booneville Beer Festival

Belmont Station Pucker Fest

Sierra Nevada Beer Camp Across America Festival

What are trends or defining moments in craft beer that have emerged or stood out to you in 2014?

I am mainly blown away by the sheer number of new breweries opening in Oregon and across the nation. According to recent numbers from the Brewer’s Association, there are an average of 1.5 new breweries opening per day in the U.S., which is amazing and mind-boggling! I also find it very exciting that craft beer sales have surpassed those of the traditional domestics. I feel very lucky to be alive and working in the craft beer industry at this time. We’ve all been working hard to raise the bar and put focus and energy into supporting breweries that are making beers that are creative, artistic and flavorful, using the highest quality ingredients available and it’s starting to pay off.

Being a super beer nerd, in 2015 I would like to see more beer “science experiments”. For example, brew two batches of the same beer, except ferment each with a different yeast strain, then offer them side by side for comparison. Also single hop beers are a good way to highlight the characteristics of a hop, even single malt beers would be interesting. I think the best experiment in 2014 was when Upright and The Commons breweries exchanged recipes and brewed each others beers, I would love to see more of that in 2015.

Name 5 of your favorite craft beers of 2014.

Breakside Bourbon Barrel Aztec

Hopworks Motherland Imperial Stout

Upright Fatali Four (I think its the best year yet)

Ninkasi Lux

The Commons Aji Citron Reserve & Breakside PortmunderX (I had to put both of these in one spot because I helped brew these beers, so they are my babies, and I love them equally.)

What was your go-to beer of 2014?

Ninkasi Lux was my go-to beer. I mean every time I fired up the BBQ, mowed the lawn, or worked in the garden, I had one of these…and it was a long summer.

What were your favorite craft beer events of 2014 (name up to 5)?

GABF

Willamette Week Pro-Am

Fruit Beer Fest Home Brewers Dinner

Cheers to Belgian Beers

Holiday Ale Fest

What are trends or defining moments in craft beer that have emerged or stood out to you in 2014?

The trend I feel like I can mention every year, but maybe more so this year, is new breweries. It feels like every month there are one or two opening in Portland. I don’t worry so much about over saturation of breweries, but maybe more about over saturation of mediocre to bad beer!

Also, 2014 seems to be the year of the growler fill station. These places are popping up everywhere like corner stores, strip malls, gas stations, and grocery stores. What’s next, 7- Eleven installing a growler station next to the Slurpee machine? Maybe.

Finally, session beers were more abundant. It seems that every brewery offered up a lager and/or session ale this year, which is a trend I hope continues.

What crazy new styles will come to the forefront of the brewing industry. Wondering will the blonde stout be a passing fancy? Will smoked beer come back or will it be a extra strong blonde barrel aged cream style. What new hop will be the new driving force behind the IPA. This year Mosaic was Alpha 😉

Times with friends – both planned and unscripted – enjoying conversation, food & beverage. Opening more minds and changing culture for the better through our work. Travels coming up, working with client partners, speaking & writing all over, and being invited to do so more and more.

Name 5 of your favorite craft beers of 2014.

The one in front of me.

The next one.

The one you’re pouring for me.

The one fresh on draft in my travels.

The one in my fridge I’ll enjoy at dinner with my family.

Use go-to instead of favorite – favorite eliminates the discovery. Go-to’s are goodies we look forward to returning to and counting on when we want them.

All Beer Events are fair game – including beer dinners at home as well as abroad: Toronto’s Festival of Beer/Toronto ONT CA; KLCC Brew Fest – a winter snow storm amped up the fun!; Gorge Blues & Brews, Stevenson WA – sipping on the majestic shores of the Columbia River….some highlights.

What are trends or defining moments in craft beer that have emerged or stood out to you in 2014?

Flavor is trumping ‘style’ talk – we should absolutely start with flavor first; style is irrelevant to those who are unknowing as well as beginning. Using flavor talk first will get a lot more people into a lot more beer.

There is no such things as a definition of the word ‘craft’ for anything – it’s too dynamic, changing, personal and contextual. If it’s what you like and want, engage. If not, be a diplomat and walk away.

Bigger conversations about women + beer. Women have always been involved in beer, beer making, beer drinking, and the beer community. It’s ludicrous to think that it’s novel and new for women to be involved in beer – no way!! The fact that so many beer brands, of all sizes, still use sexism is flabbergasting. If your products aren’t focused on quality then get out of the field. Period.

Beer is for everyone, benefits our communities and households the globe over. Moving the gender equity conversation forward means we all include women and men in all facets of beer.

Hogshead Brewing – I’ve been living in Denver part time. I’m lucky this English style brewery is my Denver local. Cask brewery that reminds you that English beers can be great.

Hair of the Dog Single Malt Adam – I’ve always recommended Adam is probably the best/most important beers to come from Oregon. Single Malt upped that estimation. Sublime. ?

Commons. Just duh.

What was your go-to beer of 2014?

DENVER: Wild Beers from UK. Great example of American brewing styles being picked up across the Atlantic. My lawnmower beer in CO.

PDX: Coalition specialty beers. Elan and the new brewer, Mike have really stepped up Coalitions’ game. Sours, barrel aged, etc available at the tasting room in the brewery. Solid, well made, interesting beers always in my growler.

What were your favorite craft beer events of 2014 (name up to 5)?

Closing time at Belmont Station. Great group of people, all beer lovers, friends.

Roscoe’s summits. Quyen and Jeremy have turned a local dive bar into one of the great American beer bars without stopping being a local dive bar. Probably the best curated beer selection I’ve ever seen.

We’ve been slowly but sincerely expanding the territories we’re shipping Trinity beer to. Indirectly I have the opportunity to travel a lot because of this, and become very immersed in new beer/culinary cultures. It’s always a personal goal to make connections with the local scene and have a good grasp of the people receiving our beers outside of town. It’s really quite the treat though as there’s quite a bit of unbelievable regional beer and food I get to try ! We’re starting small bottle allocations in Seattle, Columbus, and New York City in 2015 and I can’t wait to fully explore all those new cities. I’m also looking forward to several trips back to Oregon this year, including the Craft Brewer’s Conference in March.

Name 5 of your favorite craft beers of 2014 (for brewers, feel free to include your own if you like).

Barley Brown’s Forklift

7th Sun Under Pressure

Wild Apple Saison (Collab we did with Epic Brewing)

Agrarian Dandelion Porter

Off Color Brewing I Brewed This Myself Død Yuzu

What was your go-to beer of 2014?

Pivo Pils !

What were your favorite craft beer events of 2014 (name up to 5)?

Festival of Barrel Aged Beer

Hellshire Day

Farmhouse & Wild Ale Festival (Saraveza)

Saison Festival (Trinity)

What are trends or defining moments in craft beer that have emerged or stood out to you in 2014?

Culinary influence alongside and within beer recipes. In Colorado, the threads between artisanal beers and creative culinary designs are becoming continually more interwoven. I’m not only speaking towards the growing number of elegant food pairings/dinners, I’m also referring to brewers making new beer designs that have been inspired by dishes from great chefs.

Aside from CBC, I most look forward to even more collaboration in the brewing community, more pushing the envelope, and more and more consumers making the decision to drink better beer on a daily basis.

Name 5 of your favorite craft beers of 2014.

Stillwater Gose Gone Wild

Trinity Red Swingline

Breakside India Golden Ale

Elysian Dayglow IPA

De Garde Imperial Raspberry Bu

What was your go-to beer of 2014?

Heater Allen Pils

What were your favorite craft beer events of 2014 (name up to 5)?

Int’l Beer Festival

Portland Fruit Beer Fest

Peche Fest

Portland Farmhouse Fest

Fire & Brimstone

What are trends or defining moments in craft beer that have emerged or stood out to you in 2014?

What do you most look forward to in 2015?
Always in motion the future is. Difficult to see…

But here’s what I *hope* to find in the new year:
1) The continuing ubiquity of sour beers that don’t cost $8 for a half-pour and $30 for a bottle.
2) An expansion of lower ABV offerings that are still complex, nuanced and inventive.
3) A growing appetite among mainstream beer drinkers for more unusual or arcane beer styles.
4) New and experimental hops used in creative ways in non-IPA beers.
5) No more craft breweries bought out by grotesquely massive evil corporations.

Name 5 of your favorite craft beers of 2014 (for brewers, feel free to include your own if you like)?
Five beers that left my tongue simultaneously speechless and yearning for another drop were:

Oakshire Hellshire IV

Wicked Weed Freak of Nature

Southampton Abbot 12

La Trappe Bockbier

Barley Browns/Boneyard Allocation IIPA.

What was your go-to beer of 2014?
Dead-heat tie between Fort George Three-Way IPA and Pints Konvention Kolsch.

What were your favorite craft beer events of 2014 (name up to 5)?

I should probably confess to something: I don’t typically attend many beer events; I prefer a quiet bar and a corner table over tickets, plastic mugs, and large crowds. However, thanks to my generous co-worker, Ryan Spencer, I was able to attend a barrel aged beer seminar at Hopworks over the summer and was thoroughly impressed. All the brewers brought a special beer with them and spoke in great detail about the many tricks inherent in the barrel-aging process. They were extremely gracious with their time and the audience was interested and knowledgeable, so there was some great back-and-forth and in-depth discussion that broke out. Of course, it should also be mentioned that the beer portions were hearty and the lineup absolutely stellar.

What are trends or defining moments in craft beer that have emerged or stood out to you in 2014?
It was a HUGE year for craft beer in Oregon. Here are just a few of the highlights:

1) Hops: Just as I was starting to tire of Yet-Another-IPA, brewers figured out how to make 2014 a banner year for hopheads. What’s changed most dramatically in the past twelve months are the kind of hops that brewers are getting their hands on and experimenting with. There were a number of limited single hop brews at the beginning of this year that translated into breweries reformulating their IPAs or concocting new flagship IPAs to join their existing lineup. The dominance of the Mosaic hop in particular, and to a slightly lesser extent, New Zealand and Australian hops like Galaxy and Nelson Sauvin are completely rewriting the flavor profiles of the modern-day IPA and its ilk.

2) Collaborations: Some of the best and most interesting beers of the year were the result of brewers joining forces to concoct something insanely delicious. I love the creativity and enthusiasm that collaboration beers inspire, and obviously I’m not alone, because there are lots more on the way! Locally, we’ve seen breweries like Fort George, Barley Brown’s, Breakside, Widmer and Ecliptic reach out to friendly breweries both near and far away, but it’s obvious the collaboration fever is growing into something truly massive when a big-time brewer like Sierra Nevada teams up with breweries all over the country as they did in this summer’s Beer Camp Across America.

3) Re-emergence of German beer styles: Local breweries like Heater Allen and Occidental have been churning out reliably great German-style lagers for many years now, carving out a niche in the Oregon craft beer scene, but this year, everybody jumped on the German beer wagon. Old Town, Full Sail, and Pints brewed some of my favorite lighter style beers of the year, including Kolsches and Pilsners, while Belgian-style breweries like Pfriem and The Commons ran through an entire year of German-style brews, from light lagers to hearty bocks and fruity wheat beers, picking up where Upright left off last year when it introduced a year-long German beer program. But the best surprise of the year might be Ninkasi’s swerve into German beer territory with their Prismatic Lager Series; each and every beer to come out of that program was a knockout!

So this second installment closes out our Best of 2014 – The People’s Choice. We sure hope these lists helped you reflect upon the last year in craft beer. By no means are these the most definitive of top picks but it can be a great starting place when diving deeper into the many nuances of craft beer.

Thanks to all in the industry that replied to our questionnaire, we understand that it takes time from your busy schedule and families during the holidays. But in doing so please be aware that it means a lot to both Angelo and myself. And with saying goodbye to 2014 we want to wish you all a Happy New Year!

About The Author

DJ

D.J. is a Portland, Oregon based writer that spent his formative years in the Midwest. With over 20 years under his belt of drinking beer at festivals across America and the world, he has developed a strong appreciation and understanding of craft beer and the industry that surrounds it. He can be found in any of the great breweries or beer bars that make Portland the best beer city in the world. His writing can also be found in Northwest Brewing News and can be followed on Twitter at @hopapalooza.